Five Energy Transition Lessons for 2025

climate space, maybe we oscillate between them both. On today's show, we're going to bring you something different from our usual BNAF analyst interview. Albert Chung, bn EF's deputy CEO is going to read his recent note titled five Energy Transition Lessons for twenty twenty five. In it, he considers what lessons can be gleaned from the year gone by and how this should inform the journey ahead in just five points.

If you like our show and want other people to be able to find it, give us a review or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. B and EF subscribers will be able to read Albert's note at BNF on the Bloomberg terminal or at BNF dot com. Right now, let's hear Albert's five energy transition lessons for twenty twenty five.

This past year was no different. Record numbers of electric vehicles were sold in twenty twenty four, record amounts of clean power capacity were installed, New energy storage technologies gain traction, and when our investment totals are published later this month, we will hopefully see that energy transition investment hit a

new record. To watch this space, Yet, despite years of continuous and rapid acceleration, it has never Each winter, BNF analysts spend weeks crunching numbers only to conclude that global energy transition investment is running well below the level required to get on track for net zero by mid century. This year, the story is likely to remain unchanged. Such is the relentless logic of being on a growth curve that sits stubbornly below the curve you want to be on.

The dissonance is even stronger this year and has many contributing factors, including the incoming Trump administration, the slowing growth of evs, the struggles of Europe's battery sector, the limited progress on hydrogen and industrial decarbonization, ongoing difficulties in the offshore wind sector, and the COP twenty nine finance deal that left many countries underwhelmed. This sense of unease carries five important lessons that we should absorb as we begin

a new year of work in the energy transition. One, the energy transition won't slow down because of the challenges above. The word slow down was never far from the lips of commentators and executives last year, but in reality, our latest estimates indicate that at twenty twenty four was a

pretty strong year for clean energy deployment. Solar PV installations were up thirty five percent year on year, wind was up five percent, energy storage installations rose seventy six percent in megal hour terms, and EV sales gained twenty six percent. Note these are BNF estimates that predate the end of twenty twenty four, even stripping out mainland China, a market that can sometimes skew figures does not change the direction of travel, with most of these sectors continuing to grow

in the America's and EMEA regions. Onshore wind outside of APAC is a notable exception, with installations down as permitting delays and grid connection queues remain a bottleneck. Newer technologies like clean hydrogen and carbon capture in storage or CCS, have had a tougher year, but here we still see

growth on the way. Bnof's latest forecasts are for as much as sixteen million metric tons of annual clean hydrogen production capacity to come online by twenty thirty, up from nearly nothing today, and around two hundred million metric tons per annum of CCS capacity to be installed by then. So even the hard to abate sectors will start to

make progress. And what about the Trump effect? Our updated EV sales forecast for the US now sees them accounting for one third of new vehicles sold in twenty thirty, roughly a tripling of today's market penetration. True, this is lower than the forty eight percent penetration expected by twenty thirty under Biden era regulations, but it is still growth.

As for clean power. We would still expect more than nine hundred gigawatts of new solar, wind and storage build in the US by twenty thirty five under a scenario in which investment and production tax credits are fully repealed. This is down from our most recent forecast of over one thousand, one hundred gigawatts under existing incentives, but it

is still growth. So our first lesson is simple. Clean energy technologies will continue to grow and the energy transition won't slow down, even if it feels hard at times two, this is the hard part of the journey. That the transition is starting to feel hard shouldn't come as aus

Many of the easier opportunities have been conquered. Early adopters in richer countries have already bought evs and home solar systems and renewables developers have snapped up the best sites with the cheapest grid connections in the most economically and politically stable markets. These early movers played a critical role in driving down the costs of clean energy technologies and bringing them to scale, but achieving scale means that growth

rates will start to fall. At the time of writing, our latest estimate is that EV sales globally grew twenty six percent year on year in twenty twenty four to seventeen point two million units, approaching a quarter of all new car sales. This is undoubtedly strong growth, but it is much slower than the sixty percent and thirty four percent growth rates in twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three. In fact, the growth is starting to look fairly linear.

If our projection is right, the global ev market will have grown by a steady three point three to three point nine million units in each of the last four years. Confounding predictions that energy transition technologies always grow exponentially everywhere, we now think the solar sector will do something similar.

Annual solar installations likely grew an impressive thirty five percent in twenty twenty four and have quadrupled since twenty twenty, but our team is forecasting just eleven percent growth in twenty twenty five and more or less linear growth thereafter. This is because several advanced markets are reaching high penetrations of solar. Greece and Spain, for example, likely drew more than a quarter of their electricity from solar last year.

This drives down midday power prices, necessitating new revenue models and increased storage deployment to push penetration even higher. We know these solutions will come, but they require policy development to open a new frontier for the growth of solar in mature markets. Growth in emerging markets will be the bigger driver in future. India, Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Romania all posted more than fifty percent growth in solar

installations in twenty twenty four by our estimates. However, many emerging markets still lack the regulatory market environment needed for

large scale clean energy adoption. This next phase of the transition means tackling new problems, Unlocking storage and flexibility in mature renewables markets to drive to higher penetrations, developing renewables in markets that lack the proper technical and commercial arrangements, getting charging infrastructure right to support mass market drivers and truck fleet operators switching to evs, as well as driving demand for clean energy and fuels in aviation, shipping, and

heavy industry. Progress is being made on these challenges, and solving them will create new opportunities and stimulate the next cycle of growth in the transition.

For example, in summer twenty twenty four, EV sales in Germany slipped by double digits from the year before, but news reporting failed to point out that there had been a surge in sales the year before, triggered by the ending of a subsidy regime. What's more, the European Environment Agency has now confirmed that ninety eight out of one hundred and one automakers met their binding CO two emissions

targets in twenty twenty three. The three that didn't are tiny. Crucially, the EU wide targets have remained the same from twenty twenty one to twenty twenty four, so it is somewhat likely that these automakers will have met their targets again in twenty twenty four, and EV sales were roughly flat in Europe in twenty twenty four, not down. In other words, the auto industry is already selling enough evs in Europe to comply with the only meaningful emissions policy they are

subject to. Those emissions targets will tighten up to a new level in twenty twenty five, remaining flat again until twenty twenty nine. Given this policy design, a perfectly rational automaker strategy would be to work wait until twenty twenty five before launching new, improved, competitively priced evs, while doing the bare minimum to push EV sales in twenty twenty four and deferring price cuts even as battery prices fail

to a new record low. I believe that in retrospect we will see that the EU EV slow down in twenty twenty four was baked in from the start. It was a feature of European emissions policy design, not a bug. Lesson learned, Be careful not to misinterpret the data. Four.

A successful transition is a profitable one. It may be a blindingly obvious point, but the past year has reminded us that the energy transition will only succeed if clean energy investments generate risk adjusted returns that meet the requirements of companies and their investors. There is no world in which public or concessional capital alone can solve the climate mitigation challenge. This truism has reared its head in the

hydrogen sector, where costs are rising, not falling. Our estimates for levelized costs of clean hydrogen are thirty five percent high on average than two years ago, at three dollars seventy five four to eleven dollars seventy per kilogram, depending

on geographical location and other factors. An ammonia auction by Germany's H two Global Foundation last year priced green ammonia imports at double the price of gray ammonia in Western Europe, and there are now very few places in the world where we expect clean hydrogen to compete with the gray

variety by twenty fifty. So for prospective industrial users and producers of hydrogen who must make multi decadal investments to adopt greener molecules, meeting any return expectations will depend on regulations such as carbon pricing and subsidy for the foreseeable future. Governments that are serious about driving hydrogen use in sectors such as fertilizers chemicals and steel must make sure that long term incentives, regulations, and demand side policy are in

place to support companies and investors down this road. The benefits can be counted not only in terms of carbon emissions, but also enhanced energy security. The offshore wind industry offers

a contrasting but equally relevant example. The emergence of zero subsidy offshore wind projects in Europe in the late twenty tens led to a surge in interest across the world, with new opportunities arising in the US and Asia, National and state government agencies set up auction processors to award the cheapest power purchase contracts to the most aggressive bidders, and in many cases those developers were also made to bid competitively for seabed leases or offer other non monetary

benefits to make their bids more attractive. This ultra competitive approach has delivered impressively low clean power prices, but has also sown the seeds of other problems. Even before the inflation surge of twenty twenty two to twenty twenty three, wind turbine manufacturer's margins were being squeezed by their over ambitious customers and pressure to invest in ever larger turbine platforms.

Rising costs have since led to failed auctions in various countries and a spate of canceled projects in the US and other markets. Only now are lessons beginning to be learned. As recently as December, an offshore wind auction in Denmark failed as developers were expected to pay for the right to develop their power plant with no revenue contract on offer.

The risk adjusted returns were simply not there. Against this backdrop, it is no wonder that a number of all oil and gas companies have moved to limit their exposure to offshore wind. This may even prove to be a positive for the industry if it reduces competition and demonstrates that policy regimes still need to attract private sector investment. The same logic applies to financial institutions and their role in the transition, and here we are at an exciting juncture.

A growing list of banks, including JP, Morgan City and RBC, have committed to publish their ratios of clean energy financing to fossil fuel financing, and BNP Paraber has set a target of ninety percent, or a nine to one clean to fossil financing ratio for twenty thirty by focusing on the solutions building clean energy and not only the problem fossil fuel emissions. These types of metrics are a big step in the right direction and will likely form a

key part of banks transition plans. However, the banks cannot achieve these ratios on their own. For these aims to be realized, the conditions in the real economy must exist to allow attractive risk adjusted returns on energy transition investments, and only government can create those conditions.

narrative of opportunity and leadership. As the twenty twenties began, countries race to show their seriousness about climate action, announcing zero targets and more ambitious nationally determined contributions NDCs and implementing more clean energy policies. Narrow self interest seemed to

give way to enlightened self interest. A second shift is now in full swing toward hard nosed calculations of how much economic value and national security benefit countries can capture from the clean energy transition, and how they can compete in these new industries against geopolitical and economic rivals. The narrative of opportunity has not gone away, but it has had a strong dose of realism and competition injected. This

shift is understandable and possibly inevitable. For example, there are several major economies in Asia whose large incumbent steel industries are predicated on access to cost competitive coal resources. Some of these countries may never be cost competitive hydrogen producers, so the shift from coal to hydrogen based steel may permanently alter their competitive position in a global industry. These are complex considerations which have not featured in the power

sector transition, where competition is mainly domestic. In the clean tech manufacturing industries, especially solar and batteries, many countries are now trying to gain a foothold. However, a massive wave of investment in mainland China in twenty twenty two to twenty twenty three has led to significant over capacity globally, with nameplate capacity outstripping demand by more than double in

twenty twenty four. For both technologies, Prices of key technologies have fallen to new lows, speeding the pace of the energy transition but bringing pain to manufacturers. Electoralizer manufacturing sector could be about to experience a similar supply glut, and wind in China has suffered the same fate under these circumstances. Policies in the US, India, Europe and other markets which aim to protect and grow domestic manufacturers, face an uphill struggle,

and it doesn't seem like they're getting everything right. In Western markets, where battery factory projects are struggling, evs are still not fully cost competitive. This is despite global battery prices falling twenty percent last year to a new record low, driven by declining battery metal prices and intense competition especially

among lithium iron phosphate battery producers in China. In the US and India, developers continue to pay over the odds for solar equipment because of trade tariffs and other barriers. Like the US, the EU is trying to use tariffs to slow imports of Chinese made evs. It is also taking steps to protect its wind sector and its fledgling electoralizer industry from Chinese imports. Policymakers are knowingly or not choosing a costlier transition with the expectation that this will

reap economic, security and political benefits. This choice is rarely discussed explicitly, and the phenomenon goes beyond the US and Europe. In twenty twenty four, Turkey, Brazil, and Canada also raised or introduced tariffs for clean tech imports. Chinese and other Asian companies have built a clear lead in new energy manufacturing industries, not only in terms of scale and cost,

but also in terms of technology and knowhow. Yet the reality is that many of these clean tech manufacturers are nursing their wounds over low or negative margins while searching for new overseas markets that won't shut them out. For the sake of a successful transition, policymakers around the world should be focused on limiting excess investment in specific oversupplied technologies, while also looking for other investment opportunities where their countries

may possess competitive advantage. Not every country needs to be a solar cell and battery maker, and diversifying supplies for security purposes does not have to mean onshoring. At the same time, they must remain focused on creating supportive policy regimes for the transition itself, per lesson number four above,

to create demand for clean tech. Shutting out foreign companies will raise the cost of the energy transition for the end user and prevent the spread of much needed technical know how and innovations At a time when both energy

security and climate outcomes are at stake. Policy makers would be better off working out how to productively bring the expertise of the world's leading companies onto their shores, whether through joint ventures or intellectual property arrangements, and making sure that they foster a dynamic local industry for installation, operations, maintenance, and end of life management for energy transition technologies. Finally, many countries remain heavily dependent on fossil fuel imports that

carry significant geopolitical and energy security risks. As they transition to a cleaner mix, these risks will recede even if key energy transition technologies are imported. Remember that the lights stay on even if clean tech imports are slowed. Geoeconomic competition may be an inevitable feature of the energy transitioned, but policymakers have a choice in how to address it. Those choices, more than anything else, will shape the energy

transition in twenty twenty five and beyond. So there you have it, our five energy transition lessons for twenty twenty five. One the energy transition won't slow down. Two, This is the hard part of the journey. Three, be careful not to misinterpret the data. Four A successful transition is a profitable one, and five geoeconomic competition has become the biggest complicating factor. Very best of luck to all those navigating the complexities of the energy transition in twenty twenty five.

Neither Bloomberg Finance LP, nor any of its affiliates makes any representation or warranty as to the accuracy or completeness of the information contained in this recording, and any liability as a result of this recording is expressly disclaimed